


Not Yet

by verbaepulchellae



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blake-Griffin family bonding, Canon, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Light Smut, Pregnancy Termination, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 18:56:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10471788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/pseuds/verbaepulchellae
Summary: “You’re not sick, Clarke,” Jackson says, looking over her chart. “You aren’t running a fever, and your vomiting is too inconsistent for it to be a pathogen. Are you overworking yourself?”“No,” Clarke grits out. “I’ve been too tired.” She hates admitting it, it sounds like weakness and Bellamy squeezes her shoulder. He knows, and she reaches up and grips his hand. Jackson tracks the movement and then his face goes very still.“What?” Bellamy snaps, seeing it too.“There’s another test,” Jackson says.





	

Clarke wakes up almost simultaneously with rolling over and retching, stomach bile and last night’s dinner burning her tongue.

She coughs and feels lightheaded, her fingers shaking as they curl into the sheets. “Hey, hey,” Bellamy grunts, sleep hoarse as he runs a hand up Clarke’s back. His touch just makes Clarke’s stomach clench again and she gags, her stomach clenching and forcing up nothing.

“Babe,” Bellamy says, voice worried. He pulls her hair back from her face and holds it carefully in a fist as he sits up and scooches closer. “You ok?”

“Can you not touch me?” Clarke gasps and Bellamy lifts his hands off her, still holding her hair. “Sorry, I-”

“Don’t,” Bellamy says. “You need some water? Want me to get your mom?”

“No,” Clarke manages, resting her forehead against the back of her hand and trying to wipe her lips clean. “No, I’m ok.”

“Yeah, you sure look it,” Bellamy says dryly, but he reaches up across her and grabs the canteen of water. “Come on, Clarke. Just to rinse your mouth.”

Clarke takes it and manages a small sip. The water is cold and good, but she can’t imagine drinking too much. She passes it back to Bellamy with a whispered ‘thanks’ and feels like her whole body is shaking apart. She can feel Bellamy behind her, hovering and worried but trying not to touch her and she stretches her hand out, wiggles her fingers until he takes it and gives it a squeeze.

“I’m ok,” she promises. “Maybe just some bad meat.”

It’s not bad meat. She feels better within the hour, but even getting up and into her daily routine doesn’t manage to shake off the feeling of too little sleep.

She’s been feeling exhausted, run down, body slower and heavier and more sensitive to loud noises and bright lights, the only place that feels truly safe is in the shelter of Bellamy’s arms, face tucked into his neck, his hands steady on her back, cheek on the top of her head.

“You need to get checked out,” Bellamy says, pulling her back by the nape of her neck gently so he can look down into her face. “It’s been a week of this. Could be the flu.”

“Or I’m just stressed,” Clarke counters and leans up for a kiss, which Bellamy gives her, but carefully.

“Your stress response is either fight or fuck,” Bellamy teases her gently. “It’s not looking like you’re coming off Red.”

“If I still feel like this tomorrow,” Clarke promises, “I’ll go see Jackson, ok? But, in the meantime,” she slides her hands under Bellamy’s jacket and scratches lightly at his ticklish sides. “Maybe I do want to fuck you.”

“Hard to resist my girl when she looks like death,” Bellamy says blandly, but his mouth is hot on hers and despite his concern, Clarke pushes him back on the bed once they’re back in their room and rides down on him hard.

“Fuck, babe” Bellamy swears, hands rough on her hips when Clarke anchors him on the bed, her hands pinning his shoulders. “Fuck, look at you. Your tits, huh? Lemme touch ‘em, they look so good.”

Clarke gasps at his fingers, almost too much when they roll her nipples and she whines, grabbing one and redirecting it to her clit. His hands always feel so good, rough and calloused and Clarke leans down to kiss Bellamy as her cunt contracts sharp and quick on his cock and he muffles his swearing against her lips as much as she mutes her whimpers.

When she nearly loses her balance the next day and has to steady herself against the Ark, fighting spots out of her vision before finally giving in and throwing up, Bellamy isn’t as pliable.

“Don’t even,” he starts, voice tight with concern as he wipes her mouth clean with his sleeve. “I don’t want to hear it. We’re going to medical. Now.”

“You’re not sick, Clarke,” Jackson says, looking over her chart. “You aren’t running a fever, and your vomiting is too inconsistent for it to be a pathogen. Are you overworking yourself?”

“No,” Clarke grits out. “I’ve been too tired.” She hates admitting it, it sounds like weakness and Bellamy squeezes her shoulder. He knows, and she reaches up and grips his hand. Jackson tracks the movement and then his face goes very still.

“What?” Bellamy snaps, seeing it too.

“There’s another test,” Jackson says.

Clarke feels a little like she’s been struck with a metal pipe when Jackson sits down and gives her the results. Everything is muted and there’s an odd ringing that she can’t seem to lose when she shakes her head. “I’m so sorry,” she says, oddly formal and polite even to her own ears. “But I think I’m going to throw up again.”

Bellamy just manages to get her the waste basket.

They’ve survived literal hell and high water, a nuclear apocalypse, everything else earth’s thrown at them, and they’re still here. And she and Bellamy may understand and need each other like nothing else, may love each other like Clarke sometimes doubts anyone else can love another person, and yet. She’s not ready for this.

The ringing doesn’t leave her ears as she follows Bellamy numbly home. How does she tell him she can’t do this? Bellamy who is all heart, who has defined his existence taking care of a sister that should never have been born. How can she tell him that she doesn’t want this, isn’t ready for this, when she has thought about it, has wanted it, abstractly, for almost as long as they’ve been together?

She loves Bellamy, and one day, when they’re a little older, when the scars of saving the world are a little less fresh on their skin, and the ghosts that follow them, that lift their hair like the breeze and still sigh their names like lovers, finally choose to move on, maybe then. Maybe then there’ll be room in her heart and mind for a baby with chubby fingers and Bellamy’s dark hair. Maybe then, the thought of a little life that she and Bellamy could nurture and raise and love wouldn’t feel like an impossible, terrifying task that could only end in heartbreak.

The overwhelming terror that the thought induces now, a child with Belllamy’s freckles and her beauty mark smiling up at her, trusting her, makes Clarke almost blind with panic and she reaches for Bellamy’s jacket. Her breath catches in her chest and Bellamy turns and catches her as she sways a little just outside their door. “You’re ok,” he says into her hair as Clarke fights back a sob.

“I’m not,” Clarke chokes. “I’m sorry, Bellamy. I can’t do this.”

Bellamy takes a shaky breath and somehow it sounds like sickened relief. “Clarke, hey,” he says and lifts her chin so that Clarke looks up at him. “Do you think I’d ever make you?”

“No,” Clarke says, her hands are shaking and she has to sit down. They get through their door and Clarke drops onto the bed, pressing her hands together to try to still the shaking in them, trying to feel less small, when Bellamy pulls up the desk chair and sits in front of her, taking her hands between his own.

His dark, warm palms bracket hers and Clarke immediately feels the constrictive fear in her chest lessen a little. Bellamy’s still here. She grasps at him and grounds herself watching Bellamy’s thumbs trace her knuckles, both the visual and his callouses on her skin bring Clarke back into her body. This is safe. This is familiar. This is them.

“I’m so sorry,” she manages to whisper.

“Stop, Clarke,” Bellamy says softly, his voice rough and when she looks up at his face, his eyes are red with tears and his mouth is loose. “Stop apologizing to me, you don’t need to… I can’t do this either. There’s too much-”

He lets go of her hand briefly to gesture a little vaguely, but Clarke sees the trauma of quiet hours on the Ark, of fierce love and loneliness, the burden of knowing his love tore his family apart. She see’s Atom and Charlotte and dead bodies of teenagers, irradiated Mount Weather citizens and grounders alike.

Bellamy grimaces and drops his hand back down to hold on to her again, and Clarke realizes he’s grounding himself in her as much as she is in him. “I don’t know if… I don’t know when I’ll be ready. For a kid. Our kid.”

It’s a dizzying relief that he’s in the same place as she, and Clarke nearly topples into his chest, but she just grips his hands and finds she’s crying harder.

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy says, sounding stricken, but Clarke shakes her head through her tears and tries to catch her breath.

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t. I don’t know either. But I know it’s not now.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy whispers. “It’s not now.”

“What do we do?” Clarke asks, pushing her tears off her face with the back of her hand, even though she knows.

“We figure it out in the morning,” Bellamy says, running a hand down his face, and giving her a rueful smile. He reaches up and catches the strands of hair sticking to her wet cheeks and pushes them behind her hear. “It can wait until then.”

It doesn’t make it any less hard.

They try to go to bed, but everytime Clarke begins to drift off, nightmares about broken bodies and Bellamy and a swaddle of blankets out of her reach scare her back into consciousness. Bellamy doesn’t seem to fare any better. They give it up as a lost cause around two in the morning, and take turns reading aloud for a little while, before Clarke kisses Bellamy a little desperate, a little lost, and they fuck slow and deliberate until Arkadia wakes around them

She doesn’t go to her mom when she’s working in medical, but after dinner she finds her way to her mom’s room. Kane answers the door and takes one look at Clarke’s face before he steps aside and let’s Clarke in. He goes for a walk and leaves Clarke with Abby.

Clarke feels calm when she sits down on the couch across from her mom. “I’m pregnant,” she says. “I don’t want to be.”

Abby nods, lips tight and eyes sad but she swallows and reaches out to cup Clarke’s face. “Ok,” she says. “You won’t be.”

The procedure would be hard, Jackson explained, because Abby finished an inventory of the supplies and instruments in medical and had to leave. Clarke understands, she’d already operated on Raven once without anesthetic, this would be too hard.

“The pills that we used to have on the Ark to administer a medical termination are gone,” Jackson says gently, sitting with Clarke and Bellamy in the private office. Clarke looks out at the windows at the busy medical bay and nods. “Our dilation medications were also lost in landing.”

“So what does that mean,” Bellamy asks and Clarke is grateful he doesn’t touch her right now.

“It would be hard on the patient,” Jackson says simply. “It can be done, but it would be hard.”

“It’ll be ok,” Clarke says, trying to rally both herself and Bellamy when they leave. “I’ve been through worse.”

“Could you not-” Bellamy snaps and then takes a breath. “There might be another option, come on.”

Octavia listens, her eyes first on her brother and then on Clarke and then on Bellamy again. Clarke can’t read the expression in Octavia’s eyes “Did Lincoln tell you anything, O?” Bellamy asks. “Some grounder treatment?”

Octavia is quiet for a moment and then she turns back to the big trunk where she still keeps some of Lincoln’s things- he’s guard jacket, an old book in what Clarke thinks is French, a hunting knife and two beautiful blue stones- and pulls out a small, leather satchel. Clarke recognizes it as a twin to the one she spread across the floor in front of Lincoln while Bellamy stood behind her, a seat belt wrapped around his fist.

“There’s a tea,” Octavia says softly. “Trikru uses it to help first time mothers begin labor. They also use it to end pregnancies.” She hands the satchel to Clarke, and her fingers linger against Clarke’s like she wants to take her hand, but doesn’t know how to. “It doesn’t hurt so bad,” she whispers. “Just some cramping.”

“Thank you,” Clarke says and then hugs Octavia. She’s catlike in her arms, all lean muscle like her brother, but agitated. She can only stand the hug so long before she shifts and Clarke let’s her go.

“Thank you, O,” Bellamy says and Octavia lets him hug her for longer. Clarke sees the way her fingers curl into Bellamy’s jacket like she doesn’t really want to let him go. She looks at Clarke, safe from her brother’s gaze while he’s hugging her, and Clarke sees the gratitude and sadness and envy in her eyes.

Octavia hadn’t been ready, whenever she had taken this tea, but she’d never get another shot at a family with Lincoln. Clarke and Bellamy do.

“If you need company,” Octavia says when they’re almost out the door. “I’ll walk with you. It can help the camps.”

“Thank you,” Clarke says.

In the end, it’s done quietly and in their room. Abby and Octavia brew the tea in its correct measurements, and then leave them alone, nearby and ready to help, but giving them their space. Bellamy sits next to Clarke on the bed and they look at the softly steaming cup.

“It doesn’t smell so bad,” Clarke says but there’s still a tremble in her hands when she reaches for the mug. “Hopefully it won’t taste any worse.”

“Think of chocolate cake, right?” Bellamy manages, but he reaches out and steadies Clarke’s hand so she doesn’t spill the cup. “Thank you,” Bellamy says almost brokenly as he feels Clarke’s shaking fingers under his own.

“Don’t do that,” Clarke says. “This is what we both want.”

“I know,” Bellamy whispers and squeezes her hand. “I can still be grateful.”

Clarke leans into his side and Bellamy wraps an arm around her, rubs her arm. “Ok,” Clarke says, taking a deep breath. “Ok.” Bellamy keeps her in the shelter of his arm as she lifts the cup and drinks it down. It’s got a deep, herbal flavor, almost sweet at some moments and it’s not hard to finish.

For a while they play cards, sitting across from each other on the bed, until the cramps begin. After that, Clarke moves around their room, Bellamy giving her space, but keeping her talking to take her mind off of it. When their room feels too confining, Bellamy gets Octavia and she walks with Clarke around the Ark yard. She talks about Helios and learning to ride with Lincoln. She talks about what the woods used to be like when she snuck out of the dropship, beautiful and promising and dangerous all at once. And when she’s out of words, she just holds Clarke’s hand.

It eases in the early hours of morning and Bellamy helps her climb into the tub of hot water that Abby drew and wipes the blood off her thighs and washes her sweat damp hair. “She was right,” Clarke says, a little blearily with relief. “It wasn’t so bad.”

They talk about other things, and mostly it’s the sound of Bellamy’s voice as Clarke feels all the exhaustion and fear and pain wash away under his hands. “Come on, Clarke,” Bellamy finally says, his hand warm and comforting on the back of her neck. “Let’s get you into bed.”

It’s not hard to burrow into Bellamy’s side in the safety of their bed and his fingers work slowly through her drying hair, catching knots and working them free. “You okay?” he asks her and Clarke nods, her cheeks moving against the coarse hair on his chest.

“I am. Are you?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.” She lifts her head and she kisses him, and it in it she feels the last prickles of sadness for what could have been, in a perfect world where they hadn’t been through what they had, but she also feels hope. There’s hope for them, hope for time and healing and growing up. Hope for a few years in the future, where they can just be themselves, free from the burdens of protecting their people, free from obligations to anyone else, and freedom to just together.

Maybe one day, Clarke thinks as she tucks back down and Bellamy’s hands move slow and comforting over her back and arms. Maybe one day, when they’re ready, there will be freedom for something more.

For now, this is all she needs.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and feedback always appreciated <3


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